It may have been difficult to find a comprehensive volume of cutting-edge scholarship in bilingualism that maintained continuous focus on the same two languages—until now. Potowski and Rothman are successful in bringing together a collection of chapters that present a diverse set of sociolinguistic environments in which Spanish native speakers are growing up in English-speaking communities. Readers of the book will gain an in-depth understanding of the factors that contribute to Spanish bilingualism in English-speaking societies. This book is organized into four main sections and around major English-speaking countries of the world: (a) the United States, (b) Canada, (c) the United Kingdom, and (d) Australia and New Zealand. The volume begins with an introductory chapter in which Romaine discusses language identity and multilingualism. The subsequent content chapters excel at presenting a variety of perspectives that effectively paint the complex picture of what happens when youth are raised speaking Spanish while living in English-dominant societies. The book concludes with an afterword by Klee that synthesizes and makes extensions to many issues brought up throughout the book.
The first two sections introduce issues related to Spanish-English bilingualism in the United States and Canada. In chapter 2, García provides an illustrative example of a bilingual education program in a New York kindergarten classroom that exemplifies translanguaging (García, Reference García2009), or bilinguals’ use of discursive practices to better understand the world around them. Potowski and Gorman in chapter 3 explore the ways in which the Spanish language plays a role in U.S. quinceañeras (i.e., cultural celebrations marking a Latina girl’s fifteenth birthday), and in chapter 4, Reyes explores bilingual literacy development and how it is modulated by language practices and parents’ language toward native language maintenance. Valdés addresses the challenges of bilingual language maintenance in American schools in chapter 5, reporting on the language and identity development of two Latina sisters. Chapters 6 and 7 report data taken from two geographic extremes of Canada. Pérez-Leroux, Cuza, and Thomas first hone in on how attitudes and family practices are reflected in the bilingual development of children in Toronto, whereas Guardado examines bilingual literacy socialization and the attitudes and experiences of a Guatemalan family living in Vancouver.
The following two sections take the reader to the United Kingdom and to Australia and New Zealand. In chapter 8, Cazzoli-Goeta and Young-Scholten investigate the effects of SLA on first language syntax by looking at knowledge and use of sentence-initial nonnominative constructions by first-generation immigrants to the United Kingdom. Guijarro-Fuentes and Marinis in chapter 9 compare the linguistic performance of a Spanish grammatical concept, the personal a, by Spanish-English bilingual children to Spanish monolingual children. In chapter 10, Jones Díaz uses Bourdieu’s (1990) theory of social practice (see also a recent study by Schwieter, Reference Schwieter2011) to investigate the experience of and relationship between Spanish language maintenance and identity construction in Australia. Martín, in chapter 11 examines the challenges that bilingual youth face when they overtly display their multicultural and multilingual identity in Australia, and in chapter 12, Poyatos Matas and CuatroNochez report on the language use and socialization patterns that arise during the initial experiences of newly arrived immigrant children to Australia. Finally, chapter 13 by Walker reports on a case study of three Latin American families’ attempts to maintain Spanish in New Zealand, where only one-tenth of the country’s population comes from Latin America.
Each of the chapters covered in Potowski and Rothman has special significance to moving forward research on growing up speaking Spanish (and English) in English-dominant societies. The editors have put together an insightful and much-needed set of theoretical and empirical considerations that not only express the complexities of bilingualism and identity but also encompass the importance and reality of simply growing up bilingual across the globe. This gamut of sociolinguistic environments truly augments the comprehensiveness and uniqueness of this scholarly work. It goes without saying that the book will have merit in sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and (first and second) language acquisition, among many other areas. Not only does the book contain desirable material for scholars interested in bilingualism and identity but, because of its comprehensive nature, presentation of solid arguments, and lineup of impressive contributing researchers, it is also an ideal text to use in graduate and undergraduate courses.
